In Their Words – Fannie Lou Hamer

(Source)

“I guess if I’d had any sense, I’d have been a little scared – but what was the point of being scared? The only thing they could do was kill me, and it kinda seemed like they’d been trying to do that a little bit at a time since I could remember.”

- Spoken by Fannie Lou Hamer, a civil rights and voting rights leader, on why she put her life in danger when she volunteered to register to vote. She later became a key organizer in Mississippi Freedom Summer 1964 which campaigned to register as many African American voters in Mississippi as possible.